


White Picket Fence

by counterheist



Series: Neighborhood Watch [2]
Category: Hetalia: Axis Powers
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Mice, OC Kids - Freeform, Romano's filthy mouth, adoption troubles, fighting in front of children, lying to children for fun and profit, middle-aged homo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-09
Updated: 2012-08-24
Packaged: 2018-04-05 10:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 4,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4175676
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/counterheist/pseuds/counterheist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Antonio and Lovino live in a a blue house with a white picket fence, and suddenly twenty-five years have gone by.</p><p>(<i>A collection of tumblr drabbles written as a continuation of the Neighborhood Watch universe.</i>)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. silver

They don’t agree about which day counts as their anniversary because they don’t agree about which anniversary is their Anniversary. In Antonio’s mind their special day can only be the day they first met, for real, and went on their first date. Everything else that followed is the extra stuff, the life together stuff. Antonio cuts flowers from the garden and brings them inside on that day. He cooks the same thing he cooked on their first dinner together. He sings and dances in the kitchen. He lights candles.

Lovino says he never remembers that day until he comes home from work and opens the door to find Antonio acting with an extra infusion of stupidity. Lovino never dresses up, never expects anything, and never approves of Antonio celebrating that day instead of the day they actually finally got fucking married. After all the shit they had to go through to legally become husband and less intelligent husband, Lovino figures they should recognize their triumph over the assholes at city hall. Not the day they sat across from each other at a rainy wire table, because there were no more seats inside the café, and pretended they weren’t uncomfortable. That was stupid. Lovino doesn’t like remembering his own moments of stupidity.

But.

On their seventh anniversary ATA ( _According to Antonio_ ), Lovino comes home to Antonio sitting in his boxers and socks on the kitchen counter. He has a bowl of salad between his thighs and a book cracked open in his left hand. The book is a trashy novel Lovino’s pretty sure he banned from the house a month ago, the bowl is large enough for one person, and the boxers aren’t even Antonio’s sexy boxers. Antonio’s humming a Eurovision song to himself.

He looks surprised to see Lovino home so soon.

Lovino thinks about throwing a phone at his face, counts backwards from ten, and settles on stomping out of the room and locking their bedroom door behind him, and maybe punching some pillows, and definitely not remembering that this is their tacit anniversary, which Antonio forgot even though he insists on it. The next morning Antonio, who slept with his back to the door, tackles Lovino as soon as the door opens and demands an explanation. As a credit to all their years together, Lovino only sulks a little before giving one.

Instead of crying, or tearing out his hair in sorrow, or doing something to show his horrible regret, Antonio bites his lip and does the little shake that always precedes his declarations of

“Lovi, y-you’re so—!”

They get through it, somehow. Lovino never misses a chance to remind Antonio he forgot their anniversary, and Antonio never misses a chance to remind Lovino that he admits for once and for all and forever that this is real, and forever, and absolutely their anniversary for all time.

On their eleventh anniversary they put the newest rejection letter inside the top drawer of the table in the front hall and go to bed early. Antonio doesn’t talk for a while, and Doris down the street brings them hot meals and bread and pies every day and goes home to badger Horace, whose cousin is a lawyer don’t you know?, to do something because it isn’t fair. It isn’t fair at all.

By their twenty-fifth anniversary, Antonio doesn’t do quite as much dancing in the kitchen, but Chiara makes up for it by banging a spoon against an empty saucepan like she hasn’t since she was little, and shouting her new favorite song at the top of her lungs. When Antonio is moderately sure his sauce won’t burn, he looks away from the stove, raises up his arms, swoops down and lifts his daughter up, up, and up. She laughs, and tries to squirm away from his kisses to her nose, and the show of immense effort isn’t as much of an act as it used to be, but soon an ominous bubbling comes from the direction of the stove and Antonio has to set Chiara down. This year, Rosa agreed to take her for the evening, and when she shows up, Chiara grabs her hand and pulls her at top speed towards the living room, where Antonio knows if he doesn’t intervene, Rosa and Chiara will stay for the next two hours talking about fish or robots or fishrobots or whatever Chiara has decided is the Coolest Thing Ever this week. Rosa never stops Chiara when she gets going, and because Antonio recognizes the lost little yearning in her eyes whenever it happens, he does the responsible thing and wanders over to tell them Lovino will be home any minute.

They leave.

And when Lovino finally does come stomping through the door, pretending nothing is out of the ordinary but wearing a silver tie, Antonio greets him with an empty house and a wink.


	2. prepared

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Not much gets to Antonio.

All things considered, even though he’s pretty laid-back most of the time, Antonio knows how to handle a lot. When he was six and his sister broke her leg while she and the neighborhood kids were racing their bikes, all the other children ran and screamed and tried to move her and tried to argue about whose fault it really was. Antonio just felt… well, he didn’t feel any of that. He grabbed José’s arm, told him to get someone’s mother, anyone’s mother, whoever was closest, maybe Nora’s, and to call for an ambulance. Then he went to keep the other children away, sit with his sister, and give her his hand to squeeze and someone to shout at to take her mind off the burning in her leg.

When he was nineteen and was suddenly tossed onto the deck after one of the team’s best swimmers pulled a muscle, he grabbed his cap and smiled at his competitors. It was the championship match. It decided whether or not their school would continue to fund the swimming program. Antonio knew there was pressure, in a remote sense, but he only felt the block beneath his feet. The water. The air.

They won.

Now Antonio is thirty-eight. He has his own small business, he still volunteers with Gilbert doing anger management counseling, and he’s considering expanding his work to involve therapy dogs. He’s been living with his boyfriend of five years for two years now, and Lovino only recently started calling the house ‘ours’. He imagines those things might be stressful for other people. He imagines other people might worry about the future.

He doesn’t. He knows he’ll be prepared.

When Antonio brings up adoption, slowly, repetitively, surely, he feels like he felt at that accident, at that championship. He knows Lovino’s feelings towards children are mixed, and mostly negative, but at the same time Antonio’s seen Lovino with Rosa and Laura and he knows this is something Lovino can do. Can love. Can want.

And it’s something Antonio wants more than anything— almost anything. Children and a family of his own are something Antonio thought he would always have, somehow, some way, but now Antonio is thirty-eight, and he lives in ‘our’ house, and he’s got himself stuck with a temperamental firecracker growing a moustache Antonio will really have to get used to, that tickles!, and Antonio isn’t about to quit Lovino any time soon.

One evening, when Antonio is thirty-eight and a half, Lovino slips a partially-complete adoption form onto Antonio’s chair by the television, settles himself onto the couch, and says, “Don’t get your hopes up.”

Antonio doesn’t.

Much.

After they discuss and decide, and meet with an agent in person, and fill out more forms, and get told ‘don’t get your hopes up’ again and again and again and again, after they go through background checks and interviews, they receive a letter in the mail. It comes fairly quickly, faster than it should, Antonio knows, and he also knows that isn’t always a good sign. But he finishes up his walks, and goes to the session at the community center, and comes home, and eats dinner with Lovino, and holds his boyfriend—partner—Lovino’s hand. And they open the letter.

Antonio’s one of those people who can handle most things, who’s practically prepared for anything. He knows their chances are slim.

The stinging, stark, formal rejection still breaks his heart.


	3. look

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It only takes one look.

They had argued. They had shouted. At several points, Lovino had stormed out only to come back the next day wearing slept-in clothes and a sour expression. Once, Antonio had been the one to leave and slam the door behind him. He’d intended on staying with a friend. He’d ended up at Feliciano’s house at dinner time.

A week later he’d gone back home.

It hadn’t been easy. It hadn’t been simple. Lovino couldn’t understand his own feelings on the matter half of the time, or distinguish them from what Antonio wanted, or what Antonio thought Lovino secretly wanted, or what Antonio thought Lovino should want. In the middle of it all they had gotten married, but that wasn’t even their happiest point. That was the culmination of a long, bitter battle.

( _“Besides, that’s not our anniversary anywaaaa—” “Antonio. Shut the fuck up.”_ )

Lovino doesn’t know when his heart changed, and he doesn’t know when he decided that being a father was something he was willing to try out. It was before Antonio’s sister made her offer, but–and, standing in the hospital, Lovino feels the tingle of shame– it was after they sent in the first round of adoption papers. Lovino doesn’t know when he started taking this all seriously. He doesn’t remember at what point he first looked into the future and couldn’t see anything not involving a little ball of his genetic material running around and calling him ‘father’.

He doesn’t know any of that.

But Lovino knows exactly, to the minute, to the _millisecond_ , to the precise moment in time when he fell in love with his daughter. He drew the short straw for doing the ‘pacing father’ routine versus the ‘fainting father in the delivery room’ routine, or maybe both of them were the short straw, actually they probably were, there is nothing Lovino likes about a dilated vaginal opening other than the vague appreciation that he came from one forty years ago, and. And Antonio’s got his forehead pressed against the viewing glass, cheeks puffing clouds of smearing steam against the barrier, and Lovino stands next to him, holding his hand, absorbing his ridiculousness, and his heart is exploding and his brain can’t stay still.

And on the other side of the window, he watches his daughter sleeping, and he can’t imagine any other life.


	4. fight like it's the middle ages

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> **Prompt:** How about! Middleaged AU (them being middleaged, not the time period), Romano/Spain/Romano, established relationship, bickering like an old married couple. Preferably vaguely set in the NW universe, but not necessarily.

Four days after Laura’s tenth birthday, Mama had a work trip and Papa had a work trip too, Rosa could tell because he didn’t look happy about it so it couldn’t have anything to do with washing machines, but four days after Laura’s tenth birthday, Rosa overheard something she wasn’t supposed to hear, probably, and it took hours and hours for the screaming to stop ringing in her ears. It, the thing, didn’t have anything to do with Mama and Papa, though, and not Laura either. Not really. Sort of. A little, it had to do with Laura a little, but not her birthday or anything, just herself.

It had to do with Rosa just as much.

The morning Mama left for her trip, Papa told Rosa and Laura to pack their favorite stuffed animals, because Papa had already packed their clothes because he was better at picking out clothes than Mama but he still loved her because she was better at other things, and Rosa grabbed Mister Dentex from his spot on her bed because she liked him the best, and then Papa said they were going to be spending the weekend at Uncle Lovi’s so Rosa got really excited, so she squeezed Mister Dentex really hard and then she ran up to get Other Mister Dentex, Mister Dentex’s boyfriend, because Mister— _Uncle_ Toño always played Mister and Mister Dentex with Rosa and he never even laughed at her or anything when Other Mister Dentex’s evil twin got kidnapped by Miss Octopus’s Board of Directors.

Rosa really liked that she got to call Mister Antonio Uncle Toño now, because it was easier to say and also he got really happy whenever she said it, and also Papa and Mama got really happy whenever she and Laura said it, and Uncle Lovi just rolled his eyes. She and Laura weren’t allowed to say it until after a really big party thing in Uncle Lovi’s garden, and Rosa had gotten a new dress for that and Uncle Lovi had said she and Laura were tied for the most beautiful women there and all the neighborhood ladies had sighed, and Rosa had been really happy because after that Uncle Toño never left Uncle Lovi’s house to go to his own house ever. That meant he had more time to play with her and Laura.

While Rosa got Other Mister Dentex, Laura got her princess crown and then they and Papa walked over to Uncle Lovi and Uncle Toño’s house, and Uncle Toño met them at the door. Rosa could see Uncle Lovi standing in the kitchen pouring a glass of juice so she dumped her bag on the ground and ran past Uncle Toño who was kneeling down to tie his shoe maybe, he almost got in her way, and then she jumped on Uncle Lovi’s leg and he said something really loud and she started telling him about Mister Dentex’s latest adventures because even though Uncle Toño _always_ played Mister and Mister Dentex with Rosa, Uncle Lovi _always_ played it best, and that was because she could just show him Mister Dentex and maybe whisper in Uncle Lovi’s ear and he wouldn’t make her repeat herself or ask her to speak up or anything and he was the best.

Except then Laura ran over and started talking about princesses and then Rosa let Laura talk but she got to hold Uncle Lovi’s hand so it was okay, and Papa and Uncle Toño walked in and talked about grown up stuff.

Later that evening, after playing with Laura in the garden, and watching Blue Planet, and Uncle Toño cooking because Uncle Lovi told him to and Uncle Lovi was always right, Rosa really really really _really_ had to go to the bathroom but there wasn’t any toilet paper left in the cabinet in the bathroom and she couldn’t find any in the hall, so she went to Uncle Lovi and Uncle Toño’s room to ask for help. But before Rosa could push the door open, she heard voices, so she hid around the corner because she didn’t want to interrupt their Civil Discussion Time, like Mama always put it. Instead she listened.

“I told you to stop bringing that up.”

That was Uncle Lovi.

“I never promised that I would,” said Uncle Toño.

“Stop it already.”

“No. Can’t you see that—”

“Stop it! Stop talking around me! I told you straight out when we first started… I told you that I didn’t want kids and you’ve had years to figure out what you wanted so—”

“I know, but…”

“But what, you thought what I want doesn’t matter?”

“Lovino, that’s not—”

“That I don’t matter as much as you do?”

“You’re putting—”

“Fuck you.”

Rosa shrank back away from the door, into the shadows.

“Lovino…”

“Don’t you fucking dare _Lovino_ me, you bastard, you think if you smile and point out what you think you can get anything you want. Well that’s not how it works in this house!”

“You always say anything we fight about is my fault. Do you notice that?”

“That’s because it is.”

“Do you really believe that? Do you ever really think about what you really want, Lovi?”

“Don’t turn this away from you. This is you being—”

“No. This is you. This is all _you_ , Lovino Vargas, you’re just scared, and stubborn, and you don’t want to give your father any more ammo—”

“Shut up!”

“—because he’ll take this as a victory and that you can still be, be _cured_ , and you’ve spent so long telling him to fuck off that you’ve lost your own opinion, you’re just doing whatever will spite him—”

“Anto—”

“You shut up, you just listen to somebody else for once in your life, Lovino. Look at yourself, hell, look at how you were with the girls this morning! You love those girls; why can’t you realize that it could be like that for us? That we could have that all the time?”

“That’s different.”

“How?”

“…I…”

“You can’t come up with anything because you know I’m right.”

“I can’t say anything because I don’t _need_ to. Why can’t you concede that not everyone in the fucking world feels the same things you do? The same way you do?”

“Because you do—”

“I don’t. I’m an uncle, that doesn’t make me immediately want little brats I don’t even know running around. Don’t speak for me.”

“I can speak for you because I love you, you old bastard.”

“Don’t talk to me.”

“We aren’t done, Lovino.”

“We are.”

“No, we aren’t.”

Rosa could hear light scuffling and she wondered what was going on in Uncle Lovi and Uncle Toño’s room, but she was too scared to find out. Uncle Lovi had shouted before, and she knew he didn’t always mean much by it, but she had never heard Uncle Toño raise his voice ever at all, to anyone _ever_.

“Get out.”

“You can’t kick me out of my own room over this; stop acting like—”

“I hate kids!”

“Wh—”

“You want a reason so badly? Then there it is: **I hate children**. I never want to have children. I don’t care how much you want to set up a disgusting little family, because that’s not. What. I. Fucking. Want.”

And then Rosa couldn’t stand it anymore. All thoughts of toilet paper and the need to find it gone, she raced around the corner, flung open the door and threw herself, tears streaming down her face, onto Uncle Lovi and Uncle Toño’s bed. Uncle Toño stood in the corner of the room, hands bunched up in his sweatpants, and Uncle Lovi stood by the bed but said “Shit!” and sat down next to Rosa when she wouldn’t stop crying. He said some more bad words Papa said Rosa and Laura weren’t allowed to repeat if their mother was listening, and then he told Uncle Toño to go get a glass of milk, or something, just get out, and Uncle Toño listened this time, but what Rosa was really concerned with was how Uncle Lovi didn’t follow him through the door.

Instead he pulled Rosa onto his lap, and rocked her back and forth, and rubbed her back, and called her Sea Princess, and asked her what was wrong. Rosa really wanted to tell him that she was sorry, so sorry, so very, very sorry for whatever it was she had done to make him hate her, but no matter how much she tried she couldn’t make her throat do what she wanted it to do, and her voice choked up, and instead of words all she could make were big, gasping breaths, broken by hiccups, until finally Uncle Lovi started singing her her favorite song and then she felt a little better.

She thought she heard Uncle Toño come back into the room, then, but then Uncle Lovi gave the door a really mean look and it shut, and then his face went back to normal when he looked at Rosa so whatever it was she forgot about it, because everything was her fault.

“I…I…” she tried to apologize, like Laura would have because Laura was really good at saying stuff, “I’m—” but each time she tried, Rosa broke out into hiccups again. But Uncle Lovi was patient, like he could be, so he stuck his ear by her mouth which made her less nervous, so she apologized as loud as she could, but it was still a whisper when her own ears heard it. “I’m sorry.”

“Why?” Uncle Lovi asked.

Because she’d done something to make him hate her. Rosa thought that was the most obvious thing. What else would she be sorry for.

When she told Uncle Lovi that, his face did funny things, and then he hugged her really tight and she hoped he wasn’t saying goodbye, because she and Laura slept in a tent outside sometimes when it was warm out, but this was springtime and the ground was all wet and lumpy from the rain over the weekend, and Rosa didn’t think it’d be nice to sleep outside the house without a blanket or anything. Mister Dentex didn’t like roughing it.

But Uncle Lovi didn’t kick her out.

“Rosa, did you…do you know why… Rosa. When a person…”

“Yes, Uncle Lovi?” she asked.

He let out a great big breath. “I wasn’t _lying_ ,” he said the word extra loud, “when I was talking earlier. But,” he tilted Rosa’s head up so she could see straight into his eyes, “that doesn’t mean I was talking about you.”

“You weren’t?”

“No.”

“…promise?”

“I promise, upon my grave, and upon my grandfather’s grave, and upon all the stars in the sky, that I wasn’t talking about you, or Laura, because you two aren’t children,” his voice went funny, “you’re perfect. And you’re family, and I love you more than anybody does, except maybe my stupid brother and his terrifying wife.”

“More than anybody?”

“More than an ocean of anybodys,” Uncle Lovi said, and then Uncle Toño came in and sat down on the bed, and didn’t leave when Uncle Lovi looked at him again, and then he hugged Rosa and Uncle Lovi too, all at once, and Rosa trusted that Uncle Lovi wasn’t lying because he promised.

She put her head on Uncle Lovi’s shoulder, and slowly fell asleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Toño is my favorite nickname for Antonio. Dunno why. Also ostensibly Rosa is obsessed with fish because she was a platform in the ocean, but really it’s because kids often get obsessed with things and fish are buhyoo so there. Also wow arguing with myself is usually easier than that, sheesh, dunno what happened. Also oldtalia headcanon that Spain loves reminding Romano that he’s gotten old, whenever he remembers that that’s ammo he now has, because Romano gets all BITCH PLEASE I’M ONLY TWENTY-NINE ON THE OUTSIDE and Spain loves ruffling his feathers. Also this turned out to be less directly about a marital spat than I intended it to be, er.
> 
>  **2015 edit:** wowza married people fights have a lot of italics


	5. the one with the squirrel

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Meet Mister Squirrel.

Slamming the door behind himself with a huff, Lovino sighed before bending to untie his shoes. He’d left work without actually finishing the thing he was supposed to be finishing, which was fine, except now all he could think about were bar graphs and money and stupid accounts he didn’t actually care about. That he didn’t even smell a delicious dinner waiting on the table for him made everything ten times worse. Why the fuck had he gotten married if he wasn’t getting meals out of it? This was ridiculous. This was unfair, and Antonio was slacking, and Lovino was going to give him a piece of his fucking mind—

“Babbo, Babbo, Babbo!”

Suddenly, life became simultaneously less grim and much shorter, as Chiara barreled down the hallway, ran into Lovino’s legs and dragged him to the floor. So pushy, his Chiara; she knew what she wanted, and she got what she wanted. Obviously this was something she had inherited from Lovino, and not Antonio, definitely not Antonio, because this trait was a trait that Lovino had, and not Antonio. At all.

“What is it, Chiara?” Lovino asked, opening his arms for his Intelligent Father hug.

Chiara grinned, and Lovino noticed her hands closed one over the other, arms extended as far from her body as possible. “Papa got me a squirrel!”

What.

While Lovino tried to process that statement, Antonio appeared in the doorway because he was too stupid to fear for his life properly. He was the Less Intelligent Father for a reason. But he had oven mitts on, which meant dinner couldn’t be that far off, even though Lovino couldn’t smell it, which redeemed Antonio’s sorry ass slightly.

“…and Tomato was a little bit jealous kind of, but that was okay because Mister Squirrel is a Strong And Independent Woman just like me and Auntie because Auntie says that’s a good thing to be and I want to be good things and so does Mister Squirrel and Tomato was lonely anyway but now he’s not because he has a friend and Babbo, Babbo: _Papa got me a squirrel!_ ”

“I…,” Lovino took a very, very deep breath, “see. That. Chiara, why don’t you take Mister Squirrel back to her cage for a moment, okay? Your Intelligent Father and your Less Intelligent Father have to have a very loud talk about your Less Intelligent Father’s choices.”

“Okay!”

With Chiara and the squirrel safely ensconced in the living room, Lovino could use his better vocabulary. “A fucking squirrel? Really? What the fuck is wrong with you?! Did you jump into a tree to catch it or did you make Chiara do that?”

Antonio sat down on the ground next to Lovino and gave his Not Actually Smarter, Dear Husband an oven mitt-clad hug, complete with questionable pat below Lovino’s belt. “Lovino—“

“Don’t you dare ‘Lovino’ me,” Lovino snapped.

“My love—“ Antonio continued.

“I said—”

“ _My life_.”

“…wh-what is it then?” Lovino grumbled, because Antonio was too fucking persuasive, and also he was hungry. Nobody could argue properly when they were hungry, it was a law somewhere. Definitely in the Vargas family. Feliciano would back Lovino up on this one.

“Look.” Antonio pulled Lovino up with one arm, and with the other pointed towards where Chiara was standing, staring intently at Mister Squirrel.

Except Mister Squirrel wasn’t a squirrel at all.

Mister Squirrel was a mouse.

“You lied to our daughter,” Lovino breathed, “You lied with a smile on your face to our four-year-old daughter.”

Antonio shrugged his shoulders and let his oven mitts travel back down Lovino’s back again. “Everybody knows baby squirrels are small and cute, and don’t have bushy tails until they’re older, and can’t go outside until they have bushy tails because they need those to climb trees, and are very delicate so they can only be petted very, very softly and need to be looked after a lot by big girls because it’s a Very Big Responsibility.”

In the other room, Chiara carefully dragged a single finger up and down Mister Squirrel’s back before giggling in delight and setting Mister Squirrel back down into a plastic contraption full of tubes and boxes and tiny wooden trees. In the hallway, Lovino looked at his husband’s serene, lying liar’s face, and realized he had potentially never been more proud of him. _Fucking hell_.

“Dinner’s in the oven, and I remembered to turn the oven off first this time.”

They stared at each other.

“Bedroom now.”

**Author's Note:**

> Chiara is, of course, mini fem!Romano! After that name suggestion on Himaruya’s site. Of course. Also I have so many more things I wanted to put for this but it was late as it was, so look out for more in the future. I might be able to cobble together a proper sequel, even.
> 
>  **2015 edit:** It is extremely unlikely there will be any proper sequels, but wasn't 2012!me adorably optimistic?


End file.
